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#15Jim Pattison

CEO, Jim Pattison GroupHas twice the ambition and connections of CEOs half his age

At 85, he’s the oldest member of the Power 50, but he’s showing no signs of slowing down. “I work and travel as I’ve always done,” says Jim Pattison, speaking from his office in Vancouver. That’s a bit of an understatement: His many-tentacled Jim Pattison Group keeps growing, often aggressively. Its Overwaitea Food Group has bulked up, snapping up 15 former Sobeys locations and opening others from scratch. In July the Pattison Broadcast Group bought nine radio stations from Rawlco. Last fall it took juice maker Sun-Rype private. And over the past year the company got into an entirely new line of business, buying a pair of farm equipment dealers with 16 locations across the Prairies. “We like the future of Western Canada. We think that agriculture, long term, has a good future, particularly when you see what’s happening in Asia,” Pattison ventures to say (more than he’ll typically reveal about his company’s strategy). What Pattison says publicly is seldom as interesting as what he does, however, such as making Glen Clark, the former B.C. premier who many blamed for the province’s “dismal decade” of economic stagnation, his group president and, along with deputy chairman Michael Korenberg, heir apparent. Some of the country’s most rarified networking still goes on aboard his 46-metre yacht, the Nova Spirit. You can bet that when a big decision is made, Pattison is only a phone call away.

#20Don Drummond

EconomistGets quoted even when he’s in silent mode

His name appeared more often in the pages of the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and National Post during Ontario’s recent election than the leader of the Green Party’s did—and Don Drummond wasn’t even doing interviews. The former TD Bank chief economist stayed silent as campaigning politicians endlessly cited his landmark report on the province’s public service. With more than three decades of experience at TD and Finance Canada, he is the country’s most sought-after expert on the intersection of economic issues and public policy.